updated 12:40 pm EST, Tue December 16, 2008

Dell Green Packaging

Dell today fought to regain a reputation as one of the most eco-friendly PC builders by launching a new effort to reduce the impact of its packaging. The company hopes to reduce the total amount of boxing and other material it uses by about 20 million pounds, or the financial equivalent of $8 million, from now through 2012. Computers in particular should drop about 10 percent of their packing material and will have as much as three quarters of their packaging made recyclable over the same four-year period.

Much of the gain is expected to come from reducing the amount of cardboard and switching the padding from material like styrofoam to renewable pulp and recycled polyethylene plastic, according to Dell. Systems like the Studio Hybrid already come shipped with padding made out of recycled milk jugs, while other systems are arriving in smaller boxes.

The Texas-based firm considers its initiative a challenge to other PC makers and says it's the only firm of its kind to set a definitive target for reducing the environmental effect of its packaging.

Rivals such as Apple have publicly championed greener packaging for their systems but haven't committed to particular goals. Apple has largely focused on the aluminum and glass of nearly all its desktops and notebooks while Dell still uses significant amounts of plastic for many of its systems.

Yeah, but, they use more electricity checking for viruses so they aren't as green as Macs.

Really this is just some common sense trickling down to save money, less shipping costs, less raw materials, etc. Everyone gets to count it as a green moral good deed that they can market to the dumbgreenmasses. At least it isn't hurting people like some other greeny things like asthma inhalers being made 5-6 times more expensive by greeny laws.